New Roman Empire

When do you think the Roman Empire fell? 476? How much do you know about the Byzantine empire? Should it even be called The Byzantine Empire? Anthony Kaldellis in his book “New Roman Empire” doesn’t think so. As he says, It’s not a name it ever applied to itself, and was only created by western historians after its capital, Constantinople, had finally fallen to the Turks in 1453.

The Continuation of the Roman Empire

It was always known to its inhabitants simply as The land of the Romans, or Romania, and its emperors were the direct continuation of a line going back to Augustus. More than that, following Caracalla’s extension of Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire in 212, Kaldellis believes that the Roman Empire transformed into a nation, and its people lost their primary identities as provincial subjects, and took on a common identity as Romans.

The Significance of Constantinople

To him, just because the Western provinces fell away from the empire over the course of the fifth century doesn’t mean the eastern Romans lost any legitimate claim to be a fully Roman polity, with Constantinople christened as the new Rome by Constantine as its capital.

With that perspective in mind, he recounts the thousand year history of this new Roman Empire with great energy and an impressive ability to condense huge amounts of information without seeming like he’s skimming over a Wikipedia article.

Religious Controversies and Their Interpretation in the New Roman Empire

One reason many people may hesitate to read too deeply into Byzantine history may be dread of the often bewildering series of religious controversies that rocked the empire over the centuries. And yes, Arianism, Monophysitism Monothelititism, miaphysitism, eutichianism, Nestorianism, and the three chapters controversy make their appearances, but Kaldellis does a good job of explaining the basics of what was being argued as far as we can tell given the biases of the sources, and often channels the frustration of the reader by arguing many of the bishops who drove these controversies were unreasonable cranks.

Reevaluating Iconoclasm and the Great Schism in the New Roman Empire

Likewise, he argues that the most famous Byzantine controversy- iconoclasm, especially first iconoclasm, was an emperor-driven controversy that never really affected everyday people all that much, and has been blown out of proportion first by later anti-iconoclast emperors and by later historians. Similarly, the great schism of 1054 between the Latin and Eastern Orthodox churches gets almost no attention, because in Kaldellis’ view the churches had been de facto split for centuries already, owing to the unreasonable pretensions of the papacy to be the head of the church, rather than one patriarch among several, with no power to set new doctrine without an ecumenical council of the whole church, which was the orthodox position.

Political History and the Emperors’ Reigns in the New Roman Empire

But really this book is an old-fashioned political history, and the ups and downs of the various emperors command the most attention, especially the two most charismatic ones Justinian and Heraclius. Justinian, who presided over both the massacre following the Nika riots and the reconquest of North Africa and Italy, while also building the Hagia Sophia, is criticized by Kaldellis for overextending the empire and entangling it in too many foreign rivalries which came back to haunt the empire later in the sixth century. As for Heraclius, Kaldellis questions the official chronology of his reign in which he and his father revolted From their North African base to challenge the reigning emperor who was badly losing a war against Persia. In his retelling, it was their revolt which threw the empire into confusion and prevented a more forceful response to the Persian invasion, leading eventually to the siege of Constantinople by the Persians in coordination with the Avars. Nevertheless, once in power, Heraclius’ eventual spectacular campaigns deep into Persia, overwintering in enemy territory, and winning the war are too impressive to be dismissed. With the rich provinces of Syria and Egypt devastated by war and decades of Persian occupation, their loss to the Arab invaders a few years later is not very surprising.

Conclusion and Critique of Kaldellis’s Approach in the New Roman Empire

Earlier in my review I said Kaldellis was correct to emphasize the Romanness of the eastern empire, but I do think he goes too far in pushing back against the historical use of the term Byzantine, or indeed other western conventions. He says early in the book “The Latinization of Greek names (Comnenus) and, worse, their anglicization (e.g., John) is an offensive form of cultural